


for a secret

by irnan



Series: women of consequence [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've always liked magpies, they're fierce and they're sneaky; you feel a bit like one yourself, always chasing after what glitters and shines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a secret

one:

Words, you've always been stupidly fond of words, written and spoken; they're magic after all, spells and enchantment. Words belong on paper, and you trace them there assidiously, admiringly.

Tom takes all that away from you. He draws your words out of the paper you shape them on and _uses_ them in ways you don't understand, as if he lives off them. He uses them to make you act, but you don't remember what or why; he uses them to stop you acting, but you don't remember how. Once he's gone, you leave words behind: you know now that they can be twisted, mistreated, changed. Instead you spend the next four years carefully re-learning your own instincts and reflexes - you still have words and you still use them, but increasingly you prefer to leap before you look and show not tell.

When the Carrows come, you put these things into practice with careful, ferocious, unflinching thoroughness.

 

two:

Mum is right, but she's not _in_ the right, or at least not always; or perhaps it's that she doesn't admit there's more to it than that. You find it horribly difficult to put into words, and you know this is a trouble you share with Hermione, this justification, this stepping apart.

It would be so easy not to. You want, sometimes, to crawl back home on hands and knees and _say you were right I'm sorry I love you look after me Mum_.  
But what a waste that would be of all those years spent practicing to be who you are.

 

three:

Darkness you remember, and wet stone, and fingers tightening like claws around your very soul. But Basilisks, like Dementors, don't manage well in the light. Sand and sunlight and the Cairo dawn scrub the Chamber from your skin day by day until you scarcely remember it. Professor Dumbledore comes to see you - once, twice, three times - and you talk quietly, about everything and nothing. He nods when you tell him how little you recall, seems to expect that - _amazing thing, the human mind, Miss Weasley. Extraordinarily resilient_.

You'll show him _resilient_ ; you'll show them all. You're a Gryffindor (again) still.

 

four:

The dead don't come back.

You remember kneeling by Fred's body and how everything inside you was frozen so hard and knotted so tightly that you couldn't even cry for him.

You remember standing over Tom's body: shrunken, shrivelled, disfigured you would have said, comparing the snakelike corpse-face to the handsome boy.

The thing that angers you the most is that he didn't even know you, didn't bother to acknowledge you - could leave such claw-mark-scars on your life without it ever registering on his.

 

five:

Dad treats you - to the occasional despair of your Mum - like a seventh son, as if he's never quite worked out how to differentiate. This is a good thing in every way imaginable. You are _the Weasley girl_ to everyone in the world but Dad, to whom you are _a Weasley_. The difference is palpable. You taste it in your mouth when you fight with Mum and it is a presence pressing against your temples, pounding with your blood, when Ron starts shouting about his sister being a - _what exactly_? It makes you want to run out and _earn_ the epithet he can't actually manage to spit at you. You're so furious afterwards that you shake with it. (It, and the fear that you'll never be anything else to any of them.)

 

six:

You make friends easy, that's not in question, and you practically live with the other Harpies: cameraderie and laughter, tight friendships you keep for the rest of your lives.

But they flinch when they see your scars, and they don't have nightmares. It's a relief to get out, so that when the once-every-six-months dreams about Tom resurface, you don't wake up to frightened murmurs and a tentative touch. You wake up to Ron and Hermione fighting over the shower in the corridor outside, and Harry's heavy arms around you.

_Hush_ , he says, sleep-rough and slurred. _You're home. We're home. Go back to sleep._

You always do.

 

seven:

Quidditch = best thing ever.

Putting it into words, though, that's horribly difficult. Partly because of how furiously reluctant you've been to put anything into words, onto paper, for so long now. Partly because it's not information, it's a feeling, a sense...

All the traditional arguments apply, of course. You're competitive and you're physical; you love the feel of your own body, what it can do, how far you can push it. You admire other people's skills with theirs. You're not the sort of person who's afraid of (anything) heights. You are the sort of person who sees freedom, not fear, in endlessness. (You think you'd probably make a good sailor.) Above and beyond these things, however, you're the sort of person who likes to hover above a pitch with the Quaffle in her hand, broom humming, crowd screaming, and know two things: a) they love you. b) you are so fucking good at what you do, you own the entire stadium.

Even the ones who don't love you. Even the opposing team. _Owned_.

You're Ginny Weasley, and you're unbeatable.


End file.
